Illegitimately obtained early copies of Forza Motorsport 3 or Borderlands, being played online over Xbox Live, have resulted in permabans for the accounts of offending players, Microsoft has confirmed.

The Microsoft chief of police Stephen Toulouse has said that his enforcement team is inspecting early play and applying permabans only to those with illegitimately obtained early copies of either game. Those who got their copy because a retailer broke street date are safe, Stepto says.

Reader SK sent us that screengrab and basically admitted he visited a bootlegger with a Forza 3 copy. After getting his 360 modded, he played it for 5 days before getting banz0red.

"I called another friend who went in on wednesday to pick up a copy and get his box done too, and he also received a ban for the same reason," says SK. However, SK says the permaban is account only, not console specific. "I made a new XBL account and was back up and running (minus playing f3, of course) within an hour."